It makes us fat, rots our teeth and has been linked to heart disease and cancer, yet sugar is found in just about everything we eat – and in rapidly rising amounts.

Indeed, for many of us sugar has become our drug of choice, helping us through the afternoon energy crash in the form of a handful of biscuits, chocolate or cereal bars, and going without it makes us tired, grumpy and downright miserable.

“We’ve become a nation of sugar junkies, munching our way through a shocking 70 pounds per person every year – an amount that’s tripled in the last 50 years,” says ­nutritionist Linda Foster.

“Although fewer of us sweeten our tea or coffee, we’re consuming more than ever due to the increase in ‘stealth sugar’, which is added to most processed foods, even savoury staples such as soups, sauces and bread.”

But while the risks of eating too much fat have been well documented, sugar’s potential side effects have slipped below the radar.

It was back in the 1970s that the medical establishment first made a link between dietary fat and heart attacks, which resulted in fat being stripped out of many shop-bought foods.

To ensure food still tasted good ­manufacturers responded by adding more sugar – to pretty much everything from cakes and biscuits to steak pies and bacon.

For example, in 1978 Kellogg’s Special K contained 9.6g of sugar per 100g but it now contains double that at 17g per 100g.

Even the fruit and vegetables that we buy today, such as strawberries, apples and more recently broccoli, are bred to be sweeter than the varieties we ate in the past.

Now experts fear that in our obsession to cut out fat we’ve become addicted to sugar.

They say most of us are simply unaware of the sheer amount of sugar in our daily diet – a shocking 21 teaspoons per day according to some reports, when the recommended healthy limit is 10.

But can all this so-called ‘sugary goodness’ really be that bad for us?

Why sugar is ‘toxic’

Although we need a certain amount of sugar in our diets to fuel our body and brain, large amounts have been linked with raised levels of insulin, which increases the risk of ­diabetes.

The body also turns surplus sugar into fat and stores it around the vital organs, placing us at risk of liver and heart disease.

Some experts now believe excess sugar is behind the UK’s enormous rise in obesity.

There are also fears that high sugar diets and the spikes of insulin they trigger may fuel the growth of cancerous tumours, while other research has found that sugar may coat semen and damage male fertility.

To top things off, studies have suggested that sugar could be as addictive as drugs and alcohol, which earlier this year led academics in the journal Nature to call for sweet stuff to be taxed and restricted like booze and cigarettes.

Just can’t get enough?

The official line has always been that while sugar is high in calories it’s not addictive, but research suggests the opposite may be true.

Scientists at Princeton University found that chemicals released when we eat sugar ­actually travel along the same brain pathways that heroin does.

And when we’re stressed or sad, the foods that can produce this feeling trigger powerful cravings, causing us to eat up to six times more than our normal intake.

They also discovered that removing sugar from the diet of rats threw them into a state of anxiety, experiencing symptoms similar to nicotine or morphine withdrawal.

“Sugar stimulates the release of endorphins, which make you feel good,” says nutritionist Patrick Holford.

“Too much on a regular basis means you become deaf to your own natural endorphins, and ‘need’ sugar to feel good.”

In other words you become hooked and suffer withdrawal effects if you try to quit.

“When we talk about sugar addiction, we really mean that someone eats a large amount of high sugar foods each day and feels tired and irritable if they go for a few hours ­without a ‘hit’,” adds Linda Foster.

If this sounds familiar, then read on…

Tempting: Bag of cakes and donuts

Are you hooked?

Are you a slave to cake and cola? Do you rely on regular sugar rushes to get through the day? Take our quiz to find out if you’re addicted.

1 Do you eat high sugar foods such as sugary sweets, white bread or pasta every day?

2 Do you feel tired and irritable in the morning and again mid-afternoon, but find it’s immediately relieved when you eat something sweet?

3 Do you ever feel out of control when eating sweet foods and find that once you start eating it’s hard to stop?

4 Do you end up with sweets and biscuits in your shopping trolley – even though you promised yourself that you wouldn’t buy any?